What did you think of John Rechy's book, "City of Night"?

Strange you should mention it. I have an autographed copy from 30 years ago .Met Rechy at Different Light signing. Told him my mum loved the book so he inscribed "Your Mum has good taste." Just re-read it. For its time 1963 it was pretty raw. Of course nothing these days. No explicit sex Think he uses the word cock and fag once. Bit repetitive and drag queen intensive. The abstract punctuation and capitilization must have driven all those closeted English teachers crazy. It did Gore Vidal, who loathed Rechy. Of course Rechy was much hotter than cunty Vidal. Rechy's revenge is he's still alive at 98. Vidal's long gone.

Was this book ever filmed?

A great book. I read it in the 80s, when gay fiction was transitioning from the coming of age of privileged college boys with unhappy families to confronting HIV. "City of Night" was different from the coming of age stuff and , in some ways, presaged the HIV work; despite his education, Rechy was nothing like Ed White et al. It was raw an intimidating. I've subsequently reread it and read his later books. He remains a favorite of mine, much more than many of the others of his generation. I remember David Leavitt's panning of Rechy's memoir....he obviously didn't like a hustler having gotten in on his game (playing great writer to students) and couldn't acknowledge great writing from someone so different from him. Christopher Bram neglected him in his re-writing of class notes that he offered as a history of gay writing---Bram didn't know what to do with James Baldwin (Black, gay and angry--clearly not Bram's thing) and Rechy probably was too different from his quaint little world, as well.

Well-said, r35.

I highly recommend this book to anyone. It's a slice of history.

Fascinating book and look at the cruising/underground gay scenes in late 1950s downtown Los Angeles, New Orleans ...

When I first started reading gay "literatchur" it was mostly Violet Quill stuff and the now-deservedly-forgotten, then-exalted David Plante, a giant bore of a constipated Catholic queen. John Rechy was like a jolt of electricity compared to all the chin-stroking, "proper" gay writers.

And he kept hustling when he was teaching at USC!

I read it in the 1970s.... and at the time, with "culture" opening to sex and alternative ways of living, it both captured a "pre-liberation" universe (shadow hidden sex, sex as commerce, "butch" and "fem" hard lines, cruising in beach, street, and restrooms) and also seemed stylistic of "that time".... bombastic, cheap thrills, sloppy, wobbling register. I like it for the first and didn't like it for the second.

Now, in reflection, I think Rechy's own story and outsider-art writing style were a successful and valuable affectation.

But more than anything is does a great job of memorializing Los Angeles of the late 50s and early 60s. Pershing Square became Selma Ave: Venice Beach.

Highly recommended.

The title was invoked by Jim Morrison in the Doors’ “LA Woman”.